Can poorly performing doctors blame their assessment tools?

In the health services of the Western world, a search is under way to find effective and practical methods for assessing the performance of doctors. Regulators want to identify those doctors with unacceptable performance, educators want methods to guide their various interventions, and managers want information for monitoring and appraisal. Use of multisource feedback (sometimes called 360° feedback) is relatively new in health care, although it has been used in the commercial world for a decade or more. The paediatricians in Sheffield who used SPRAT are being followed by doctors in different disciplines using similar instruments.1 In the United Kingdom, the …